Nigerians Misunderstood Buhari’s Comment Blaming Gaddafi For Herdsmen Killings – Defence Minister

President Muhammadu Buhari’s claim that gunmen trained by former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, are responsible for killings in Nigeria was misunderstood, says Defence Minister, Mansur Dan-Ali.

It would be recalled that President Buhari had held late Gaddafi responsible for killings in the country during his recent visit to President Donald Trump at the White House in the United States.

“These gunmen were trained and armed by Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. When he was killed, the gunmen escaped with their arms. We encountered some of them fighting with Boko Haram,” Buhari told Trump.

The president’s claim had earned him severe backlash from Nigerians who largely felt he exonerated Fulani herdsmen from killings in the country because he is from the same ethnic extraction as them.

But addressing some of the reactions that trailed Buhari’s comment at the White House, Dan-Ali said the president’s statement was misconstrued.

The Defence Minister, who spoke at a town hall meeting convened by the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, in Abuja, said President Buhari was referring to the “infiltration of weapons into the country, which has led to loss of many lives” and not necessarily that gunmen from Libya were the ones killing Nigerians.

Mansur disclosed at the town hall meeting that the Federal Government has set up a committee to investigate the proliferation of arms into the country.

On his part, the Minister of Information blamed herdsmen killings in the country on “demographic, environmental, social and economic dynamics,” saying “it will be a distortion to attribute the clashes to ethnic and religious reasons.”

Mohammed said, “The Nigerian Air Force has deployed its Special Forces to the newly-established 23 Quick Response Wing in Nguroje, Taraba State. The NAF also has a 1,000-man Special Intervention Force deployed in Makurdi to degrade bandits and criminals in Benue and Nasarawa states.

“In the last two weeks, the Police Intelligence Response Team and the Police Special Forces, whose work cut across Benue, Nasarawa and Taraba states, arrested 11 suspects and recovered 10 AK-47 rifles and other firearms from them. These are just some of the arrests made by the security forces in recent days,” he said.